WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

Five new sports were added to the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics that will now be held next year.

The traditional Japanese martial art will see men and women competing in kata (forms) and kumite (sparring) events.

Like breakdancing, this is another sport with a rich street culture, added to up the Olympics’ youth appeal.

A form of highintensity scaling that typically lasts for shorter durations and will be conducted on climbing walls.

stunning

Pacific coastline will see the world’s top surfers compete, divided according to size and type of the board used.

lllllThis one is back as an Olympic sport after last featuring in the 2008 Beijing Games.

Japan’s karate champ Ryo Kiyuna, favoured to win gold in the 2021 Olympics

Russia, France and Japan, while the women’s medallists came from Japan, Canada and South Korea.

“Our fear is that in becoming a sport, it could become mechanical and suffer from a lack of feeling,” says Johanna Rodrigues aka B-Girl Jo, 23, from Bengaluru. “But a more dangerous way of losing that artistic touch is if the dance is ever taught without the values of hip-hop.”

Those values are focussed on peace, universal love, a desire to focus on what unites rather than what divides; and a need to be free of all elements of the establishment that run counter to this philosophy.

“The idea of competition, of being ‘the best’ is not important in breaking culture,” Rodrigues says. “It’s also just about having fun.”

What both sides concede is that Olympic sport status could make the world take breaking — and by extension hip hop culture — more seriously.

“It could help legitimise the movement, especially in India, where parents can often be hesitant to let children follow a largely uncharted path. Breaking could even end up in the curriculum,” Rodrigues says.

Now that is something that would certainly divide the community even further.